The case for intelligent design

While those with a scientific and materialistic worldview would beg to differ, our biology confirms that we were created by intelligent design – not by accident.

Engineer-turned-molecular-biologist Dr. Douglas Axe describes the domino effect of the materialistic worldview and builds a case for intelligent design.

“There’s a figure that shows these four dominoes that are poised to topple. They have written on their sides: first, materialism, then accident, coincidence, and then repetition.”

Dr. Axe explains how materialism leads us into believing that the origin of life is based on accidental causes.

“Materialism is this philosophy that says there can’t be anything other than the material world; we’re going to restrict our explanation of the origin of living things to material explanations, everything else is ruled out of bounds. That comes from scientism and materialism, two false philosophies.”

“If you committed to materialism, then you’re committing yourself to accidental causes of all things, in particular, the invention of living things has to be explained in terms of accidental causes because you have nothing else, you can’t appeal to purpose because you’ve committed yourself to material explanations. So whatever caused humans to arise, it was a series of accidents.”

Dr. Axe says that if you’re going to appeal and commit yourself to accidents, then they have to be very remarkable accidents.

“They have to be remarkable coincidences, as in highly improbable, and the only way that you can overcome highly improbable coincidences; these are far beyond lottery winning, this is like winning the lottery a thousand times in a row. The only material way to defeat odds like that it to have lots and lots of opportunities.”

He shares a practical example,

“If the odds are winning the lottery are something like 1 in 10 million for a state lottery, if you are determined to win it, you can win it, but you have to be willing to play ten million times or buy ten million tickets.”

“No matter what the improbability is of something happening, if you have the inverse of that number of chances for it to happen, then it can happen.”

Why doesn’t scientism and materialism provide a solid explanation of the origin of life? Dr. Axe explains by discussing the probability factor.

“The dominoes fall because some things are so improbable that there just aren’t enough opportunities for them to happen. Once you get something like 10 to the 40th power of things happening in living creatures, or 10 to the 100th power things happening anywhere in the universe, there just isn’t enough time and space for these things to happen by accident, so they can’t happen by accident. They have to happen intentionally if they’re going to happen.”